


something else to see

by choomchoom



Series: angsty driftrod flashfic [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, talkin about autocracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-08 07:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21232325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choomchoom/pseuds/choomchoom
Summary: Hot Rod explains a little about his past to Drift.





	something else to see

“What did you do to get stuck rooming with me?” Drift hesitantly took his sword off of his back and leaned it carefully against the wall, then, not having any other possessions to store away, sat down on one of the room’s two berths.

“What are you talking about? We’re a little strapped for space these days, is all.”

Was he – Hot Rod – being deliberately dense? Was Drift going to have to spell it out? “Most of this crew seems barely willing to tolerate me on their ship. I assumed you’d all pack together like –” He choked on his go-to comparison,  _ like K-class in a drop shuttle  _ “– like, as tight as possible to make sure none of you had to fall asleep with me in the room.”

“Are you planning on murdering me?” Hot Rod’s voice was nonchalant enough that Drift had to review the data from his audial sensors to make sure he’d heard correctly.

“No,” Drift said.

Hot Rod flopped down on his own berth, pillowing his head on his hands, still looking over at Drift. Somehow, impossibly, he was smiling. “Then we’re good.”

Drift wanted to argue – why  _ should  _ Hot Rod trust him? The other Autobots were right to be wary. Certainly Drift, as Deadlock, had killed people Hot Rod had once known. All he’d accomplish by giving in to the bizarre urge would be to make Hot Rod worry, when Drift truly had no intention of harming him. But this easy acceptance was unnerving – it made Drift fear for Hot Rod’s safety.

Maybe it was charisma alone that had kept Hot Rod alive this long, if he always trusted this blindly.

“The Autobots didn’t like me much either, when I first joined up,” Hot Rod said. All of Drift’s internal musings fell to pieces.

“Why?” he asked, instead of  _ how could anyone ever not like you? _

Hot Rod’s optics flared a little, like he was stressed. Drift sensed he’d hit on a sore subject and internally cringed. “You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to,” he said quickly.

“No I – nobody’s really asked me that before. I guess I’ve never really  _ mentioned  _ that before. I’m sure Bumblebee and Ironhide and – and Optimus and everyone remember, but it doesn’t, you know, come up.”

Drift nodded.

“I –” Hot Rod started, then paused, shifting to sit cross-legged on the berth with his back against the wall, looking sidelong at Drift. “Maybe you’ll hate me too, if I tell you.”

“You can’t know half of the terrible things I’ve done,” Drift said gently, or as gently as a person could say such a thing.

“Do you remember Nyon?” Hot Rod asked, his voice pitched carefully neutral.

“Not really.” Drift knew that something had happened there, early on in the war, before he’d even joined the Decepticons, but he’d never learned the specifics.

There was something indescribable in Hot Rod’s optics. “Really? It was a  _ city _ . A whole city.”

_ I was killing people on the other side of the planet.  _ “I wasn’t paying much attention to politics at the time.”

“Sorry, that wasn’t supposed to be personal, it’s just – nobody remembers. Nobody ever seems to think about it. A  _ whole city _ . We’ve lost bigger things since then – the Decepticons have destroyed whole solar systems –” Hot Rod’s head whipped around suddenly, optics wide, as if he’d remembered who he was talking to.

“I know.”

Hot Rod barely seemed to relax. “It makes sense. Everyone wanted to forget about Nyon, even before.” Hot Rod crossed his arms and hiked up his shoulders. “I’ve never talked about this, since it happened.”

_ Then please don’t _ . Drift didn’t think he could get any more uncomfortable with this vulnerability, this trust that this  _ stranger  _ was affording him. But this trust was obviously a gift, and it wasn’t Drift’s place to refuse, even if he didn’t deserve it. “Talked about what?”

“I destroyed Nyon.” Hot Rod was obviously searching Drift’s face for judgement, for condemnation. Drift didn’t give it to him. The discomfort of being so trusted by Hot Rod was affecting him more than the contents of this story possibly could. At Drift’s lack of reaction, Hot Rod continued. “Zeta Prime had this weapon that could run on energy harvested from people. He’d been doing it in Nyon for six cycles. A group of us had gotten together, to figure out what was going on, to stop it – but people kept dying or disappearing. At the end of it I was the de facto leader, just because I’d stayed alive the longest. We tried bringing in Optimus, but by the time we made him understand what Zeta was doing, it was too late. I’d wired the city, ages back, as a contingency plan in case Zeta decided to use Nyon to attack the rest of the world. That’s exactly what Zeta did, that night. I set off the charges before he could get too powerful for Optimus – and Megatron – to stop him. I destroyed Nyon.”

Hot Rod had curled into himself during the short, jerky speech. Drift could tell that he hadn’t rehearsed it, could believe that he’d really, as he’d said, never talked about it before. “You made the best choice you could in an impossible situation,” said Drift. He could hardly conceive of how anyone could judge Hot Rod for this. Drift had made many worse choices than that, with much less reason.

“The Autobots don’t think of themselves as the kind of people who would destroy cities, no matter what the choices are,” said Hot Rod. “Maybe they’re not. Maybe Bumblebee or Orion wouldn’t have done what I did, in my position. Maybe they really would have been too smart to get to that point, like they think they would. They’ve never been as powerless as we were.”

“I’m sorry about Nyon,” Drift said.

“Thanks,” said Hot Rod. He didn’t quite uncurl, but he managed to look toward Drift again. “So, yeah. The Autobots hated me at first, and that’s why.”

“What did you do about it?” Drift asked. In the Decepticons, you gained acceptance by being stronger, slyer, more ruthless than the rest. Here, he was certain that none of those things would help him. But he was drawing a blank for what  _ would _ .

“I gave them something else to see me as,” Hot Rod said. “I was really young at the time, and I played into that a bit – I told a lot of jokes, made a show of not taking things seriously. It’s actually very easy not to take things seriously, when you kind of feel like the only thing that matters is gone, and nothing will ever really matter again. But, anyway, that. That and time.”

“Thank you,” Drift said. “Thank you for telling me, for trusting me.”

“Thanks for listening,” said Hot Rod. “I’ve never had anyone who would listen to this and believe me. Believe that I did everything I could, and not secretly be thinking that there must have been a better way.”

Drift met his optics. “I’m sorry you didn’t have that.”  _ You deserved better _ , he didn’t say, for the fear that Hot Rod might think he was implying that Drift deserved better too. He didn’t. He didn’t deserve even this much, this massive, unprompted disclosure or the trust that came with it. But he would take it.

Hot Rod smiled. “What does that matter?” he said. “I have you now.” 


End file.
